The Pitch - Opening Scene Synopsis

Our chosen genre is romantic comedy because all members of our group enjoy the genre and have ideas of how we can recreate romantic-comedy to form our own opening scene. We have begun to research the genre’s codes and conventions and have applied them to our ideas to create a plan for an opening scene.

We plan to begin with a shot showing the inevitable ending of the film which when researching the genre of romantic-comedy we found is quite common to do. Some examples of films that employ this technique are; American Beauty, The Fault in Our Stars, and Love Rosie. We think as many rom-coms have quite simple narratives that take a while to get into, starting with the ending will provide us with a hook to draw in an audience and will make the beginning of the film more interesting.

For our opening scene, the ending of the film (and so the first shot) will show the couple finally ending up together and demonstrating their love in public. The shot will open with a close up of the couples combined hands and the camera will then pan out to reveal the couple is in fact two males and the protagonist of the film will be revealed. We plan to film this shot in the town centre with the backdrop of the shot being picturesque to make it more romantic, we also hope to display the idea that it is winter/Christmas as many romantic-comedies are set at this time of year and so we can stick to the convention. The shot will then fade to black and here we will introduce the title of the film. It will then rewind to the beginning of the chronological events and the screen will display *6 months earlier*.

The next shot will be an establishing shot of the school which the rest of the opening scene will be filmed at and the majority of the film would feature. At this point the soundtrack which we plan to be quite lively and playing prior to this point will begin to fade out ready for the dialogue in the scenes to follow.

The next shot will be a POV looking down toward a phone screen which will display messages to another character. Although the shot will only be brief, we plan to portray the idea that the recipient and sender are in a relationship by using hearts in the messages so even as the audience don’t get the chance to read the conversation its intention is clear. The shot will then show the phone being taken out of the sender’s hands and then will quickly cut to a shot showing a table of male characters laughing.

At this point, the person who took the phone will begin to read out the conversation and our protagonist will be mocked and clearly embarrassed. We plan to have the protagonist on the edge of the table to visually represent how he is at the edge of the friendship group; he doesn’t quite fit. When the other characters mock the protagonist we also want to display the idea that they think he is straight, emphasising how they believe he is texting a girl. This shows the audience he is currently ‘in the closet.’

At this point the dialogue for the protagonist begins, however we hope to have already portrayed the idea he is insecure by this point.  We plan for him to make a comment asking for his phone back and then an excuse to leave the table.

As he is walking away from the table, the camera will pan backwards following his movements and we plan for him to be looking miserable/annoyed. However his phone will then ping and he will lift it to read it and a small smile will appear on his face and that will be where our opening ends.

The enigma for our opening is how does the protagonist come out? And how does he end up with the other character? Although we aim to stick with the conventions of the romantic-comedy genre, we hope we can challenge them by using a homosexual couple as our protagonists rather than a stereo-typical hetero-sexual couple.

The Pitch - Our Opening Scene Ideas

(Click mindmap to expand)

The Pitch - Mise-en-scene Plan

Location:

We plan to film in 2 locations, the sixth form canteen and in the Tamworth castle grounds. The Castle Grounds scene is the first for our opening and has been chosen because it can look picturesque and provides an appropriate background for the shots we plan to film.

Our second location of the sixth form canteen is self-explanatory as the premise of the scene is that the group of ‘lads’ are on a break while at sixth form and at the end of the scene our main character leaves to return to lesson (and escape the awkward situation.) We are using the locations as representations, as for the castle grounds scene the two characters will be out in the wider world, connoting they have come out and in the canteen scene our main character will be positioned on the edge of the table to show he is separate to his friends.

Costume:

For our first scene we plan for our two characters to be wearing casual but warm clothing eg. Scarf, coat which connotes the scene is taking place in winter; the typical time of year for the majority of rom-coms. Contrary, in our second scene all of the characters will be dressed in suits appropriate to the context of the scene (sixth form). However we plan in this scene to use the outfits as a representation as our main character will not be wearing our tie whereas the other characters will showing he is different to them.

Lighting:

All of our scenes will be bright and well-lit as from our research we found rom-coms usually have very light storylines and so if our scenes are dark or dimly lit it wouldn’t match the narrative. The lighting will also help put the audience at ease and relax rather than be on edge which a darker scene may cause.

Representation:

We are planning to use a variety of concepts to represent our characters and narratives.

Firstly as mentioned in costumes, our main character is going to be dressed slightly different to the other characters to represent how he is different and secondly as mentioned in location, the character will be seated at the edge of the table to represent how he is separate to the others; he’s different.

We are also breaking a typical rom-com convention by the narrative surrounding a gay couple rather than a heterosexual relationship. We believe this is a way in which we are bringing the rom-com genre into the 21^st century where the diversity of relationships (particularly homosexual) is on the increase.

We are also representing modern relationships by using technology as a major aspect of our narrative. Relationships nowadays do have a high online presence as well as real life literal presence and therefore we want to represent both of these in our narrative with the first scene showing the couple physically together and the second showing the couple talking over text. The connection between the protagonist and the recipient of the messages will be clear to the audience as we are using hearts and kisses throughout the exchange to symbolise the relationship.

Target Audience - Audience Profiling

In order for us to gage the target audience for our final product we used different tools to research into the audiences of similar products in the romantic-comedy genre.

One tool we used was YouGov.co.uk in which you can enter a film or product and the tool will use online polls completed to form a stereo-typical audience individual. Once the website has combined its polls and surveys you are given different categories to explore for that individual, these include; demographics, lifestyle, personality, brands, entertainment, online and media.

We used this tool to research the audience for 2003 romantic-comedy, Love Actually. This is a similar product to ours as it is a relatively small budget, British production, produced by film studio Working Title. The results were as follows:

Demographics - Female, aged 40-54, social grade ABC1.
Lifestyle - Watches TV, spends time with family, interested in books and movies.
Personality - technology dependent, open-minded, feminist.
Brands - Boots, Tesco, M&S
Entertainment - Bridget Jones Diary, Adele, Friends
Online - Twitter, Buzzfeed
Media - Big Brother, Daily Mail, Whats on TV.

We conducted the same research into Pretty Woman and got similar results particularly for demographics in which the result was female around the age of 50 and personality where they are very open-minded but also reliant on the internet and technology.

We used this research to develop a similar idea for our film and used the same categories to profile what a stereo-typical member of our audience would be. We came up with:

Demographics- Female, 20-35, social grade B,C1,C2
Lifestyle - Watches TV, interested in romance books
Personality - Open-minded, internet reliant
Brands - Boots, WHSmith
Entertainment - Gossip Girl, Celebrity Juice
Online -Twitter, Buzzfeed, Instagram
Media - Big Brother, The Sun, OK Magazine

Another method of researching into our audience was simple searches and reading reviews. We read several reviews for different romantic-comedy's such as Love Rosie, and The Vow and in many of them, the critic pinpointed who he/she thinks would like the film. We found that the average audience who the films would most appeal to are females, age 20-40 which was as we expected and supported our audience profile.

Target Audience Research - BFI Statistical Yearbook Analysis

From this table we are able to identify that the genre of comedy had the highest number of releases in 2014 with 153 releases whereas western had the least number of releases with only 3 releases. Focusing on the genres of horror and thriller, horror released 37 and thriller 64. However, horror’s gross box office totalled £57.5 million with only 37 releases but thrillers 64 releases only totalled £29.1 million. This concluded that the thriller genre is more popular in terms of the films released compared to horror however horror is more profitable. The top performing releases of the two genres are World War Z starring Brad Pitt for horror, and Prisoners starring Morgan Freeman for thriller.

For our opening scene we are focusing on the combined genres of romance and comedy; one of which had the highest number of releases and a gross box office total of £158.2 million. The highest performing films of the two genres were The Hangover Part III and I Give It A Year, which we could research into.

From this table we can draw the viewing statistics and the average number of sites at widest point of release for each genre. It shows that the sci-fi genre was the most wide-spread with it on average at 422 sites however it only grossed £87.4 million: reasonably low compared to the top grossing genre of animation making £246.6 million.

In terms of romance and comedy (our opening scene genres), they are middle board and reasonably widespread with comedy on average being shown at 102 sites and romance at 59. Although not widespread comedy is proven to be one of the more profitable genres grossing £158.2 million.

This table presents average box office gross per site and the total sites for each genre. As this table is in order of most grossing to the least, we are able to easily conclude the genres with the highest average box office are Adventure and Animation, which compared to total sites is relative as animation has the third highest total sites with 9004. 

This table shows which genre had the highest gross box office based on UK films released in the UK and the Republic of Ireland in 2013. It shows that the most grossing were action and music/dance with them grossing £64.1 million and £47.9 million. The top performers in these two genres were Fast and Furious 6 and Les Miserables. However, relevant to our opening scene genre, comedy ranked third grossing £37.9 million and the top performer of the genre being The World’s End.

The top graph shows the proportion of box office each genre has for all films, just UK films and UK independent films. We can see that for All Films, the genre with the highest box office is animation however it has one of the lowest for UK films as often they are small budget and animation is expensive. For UK films, action has the highest box office and is also high for UK films and UK Independent. For UK Independent films, comedy is the genre with the highest box office and for the genre of romance, UK Independent films is the type which achieves the highest box office.

The bottom graph shows the proportion of releases for All films, UK films, and UK independent for each genre. We can see that for All films, comedy has the highest proportion of releases however for both the UK films and UK independent films, documentary has the highest proportion of releases.

Research Into Existing Products 2.2 - Title Sequence

This is our practise title sequence which enabled us to learn the order of a conventional title sequence and how to construct one. We can use this to create the title sequence for our opening scene.

Research Into Existing Products 2.2 - Studio Logos and Title Sequence

Film studio logos are projected at the very start of a film before the title sequence. They are often ignored however are a good representation of the era the film was produced in as many studio logos have evolved over time.

Below shows just two examples of the evolution of film studio logos; Columbia Pictures and Universal (two of the most recognisable.) Both have evolved from the 1910’s til present however have kept constant one recognisable symbol for audiences to remember; for Columbia Pictures it’s the lady liberty figure, and for Universal, the globe. These have become iconic and through being the initial visual at the start of the film, brands the film with their studio.

Following the studio logo is the title sequence. The title sequence has a specific order which has become convention. Some modern films have made the title sequence almost unnoticeable as it projects at the bottom of the film opening.

The order it conventionally follows is:  

1.       Studio/Producer presents

2.       Starring (main actors)

3.       Title of film

4.       Screenwriter

5.       Cameraperson

6.       Composer/music by

7.       Editor

8.       Producer

9.       Director

For our opening scene we plan to stick to this conventional order by creating our own title sequence using the titles relevant to us and projecting it over our opening scene.